I spent a month in England once and I can't count how many times someone tried out their John Wayne accent on me to prove they could talk like an American.

You got me to thinking about what people around here call each other instead. "Buddy" and "pal" have disappeared into the past. "Dude" belongs to the under-30s. People do say "guys" as a plural attention-getting noun, as in "hey guys, we gotta get going or we'll miss the ferry," but they don't use it in the singular. I can't think of a word we use instead of the other person's name, in fact. Unless we're yelling at another driver, in which case there are several, but if you watch American movies you know those. The way we imagine our lives is the way we are going to go on living our lives.